JOTTINGS IN HAWKE'S BAY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 3863, 4 July 1874, Page 7

JOTTINGS IN HAWKE'S BAY.

[By a Recent Visitor.] Strolling quietly along Princes street one sunny afternoon, a few months ago, in company with a friend, talking about indifferent matters of one kind and another, the conversation happened to turn on the North Island, whither the writer was about to proceed by the first steamer, on a six weeks' trip. " I am thinking of taking a run up North to Hawkes Bay myself, in the course of a few months, to have a look about me," said my frien-l; "in tlie meantime I wish you would keep your eyes open, and if you should by chance happen to drop across any little investnv. Nt you think might suit me, let me know ; that's a good fellow." I acquiesced, Hi who mdc.d could help acquiescing when thus appealed to on the score of good fellowship. During this six weeks' trip of mine, ] accordingly kept my eyes open in my friend's interest, and noted down at the time for future reference, such items as appeared to me noteworthy Thinking that possibly they may not be altogether devoid of some little degree of interest to your readers, to those of them at least, in whose way it has never come to travel over those portions of the North Island which my trip embraced, l venture to forward them to you for publication :— Hoar, land of cakes and brither Scots, Frae .Maiden Kirk to Johnny Groats, If there's a hole in a' yer coats I retloye'll tont'it; A chicl's amaiKfyctakiiijfnotas, An* faith he'll prent it. NAPIER. Nestling up at the tip of a narrow tongue of land, that trends away northward, out int) a large bight of the sea, a great scoop of water, some fifty m le's or more across, from the Kidnappers in the south to Portland in the north, that seethes and heaves and hisses when the black northeaster comes sweeping across it, lies the to^vn of Napier. Napier lies on the south side of this tongue; but you do not land at Napier. No ; the landing place is at the northern side—at the Spit. What the Bluff is to iuvercargill—what Port Chalmers is to Duntdin—what Lyttelton is to Christchurch —the Spit is to Napier. It is the port of the capital. But up here, port and capital nestle close beside one another—three quarters of a mile apart, perhaps ; a mile at the outside. And the distance between them is spanned by a white powdered limestone road, that glints and glimmers in the glaring sunlight— a road that, with easy gradient, takes you over a bright, rounded, evergreen hill, dotted with clumps of trees and patches of manycoloured shrubs, from out of which clean cosy cottages and deep verandahed villas peep down pleasantly upon, you. A pleasant town as to appearance is Napier. It is a town of a couple of thousand inhabitants or so, I should say, clean and bright, andeuany and healthy, with wide streets and well-to do shops—well-to-do, though outwardly they have little pretence or show about them. But, then, unpretentiousness, simplicity, and homeliness are the prevailing characteristics not only of the place, but of the people. Yes, they are very unpretentious; and they have yet another characterist'c, about which I must say a word or two, and that is their easy going contentment. In their manners, in their conversation, in their outward appearance, the inhabitants of Napier and of the Province generally wear a contented, self satisfied air that must strike the most superficial of observers ; and I must siy, in all truth, that not without reason do they show forth their contentment, for truly their lines have fallen to them in pleasant pi ices. Sitting the first evening of my arrival with a fritnd and fellow-passenger—an old Dunedin resident, and a fortunate investor in Hawke's Bay property—surrounded by a pleasant circle of Hawke's Bay settlerp, this easy-going contentment of the place became the topic of conversation. My fellow-pas-senger, a man of progress himself, had been highly amused at the announcement that had met us on our arrival in the harbour. Our vessel, the Paterson, could not go up alongside the jetty, we were told, because the jetty was already occupied by a collier, and there was no room for the two. Now this announcement, as I have just said, was a source of great amusement to my friend, and he had been still further amused by a little incident that had befallen him upon landing. Going to the Telegraph Office af ler landing, to send a message, he handed his message and half a sovereign to the lad at the window. But his half sovereign was handed back to him again. "We have no change," said the lad ; " but it's all right— you can pay us tomorrow." "Whydon't you run out and get some silver?" "Get some silver!" exclaimed the lad; "why there's no silver to be got in Napier." No silver to be got in Napier ! The Paterson unable to come alongside the jetty, because tbe jetty was occupied by a miserable small collier ! My fellow-passenger was mightily tickled with these evidences of Arcadian simplicity, making merry over them all day lon^ ; and now in the evening, sitting over his whisky toddy, surrounded by a social circle of settlers, he was referring to these things in words of jocular pleasantry. "We are a contented and happy people," answered an old gentleman—a hale, hearty old soldier, of genial manners, and with merry twinkling blue eyes ; %< we are a contented and happy people, and get along all right somehow or another. .Of course we have not the progress and energy of you Otago people, but "—and hers the twinkling blue ey« was lit up with an extra .twinkle— " insolvency ia unknown, amongst us. We go in for penny pool, Sir, and pay one another in postage stamps, and are satisfied." Yes, they certainly are satisfied ; but one may take leave to doubt the goodness of such satislaction. I like Napier ; I like its climate and its people—but lam inclined to think it would be none the less likeable if animated with some of our Southern energy, aye, even though, an occasional insolvency were to happen now and then. The playing of penny pool, and the making payment in penny stamps may be pleasant enough in its way, but most persons will incline to the belief that the days are gone by for the playing with *uch stakes. Shilling pool paid for in shillings is more in accordance with •the pirit of these latter days. Communities, Ilk^s nations, must now-a-days make the most of the advantages Natnre has placed at their disposal, or become laggards in the race of life. Progress is the watchword of the age, and excelsior the aim of humanity. As I was naturally anxious to make the most of my time and see all I could of the Province during my stay, I started away TJP THE COUNTRY, as soon as I got through some few matters that det lined me in Napier. And I was very fortussate, indeed, in having as a travelling companion, an'old Hawke's Bay settler, who kiadly placed himself at my disposal" for the trip. Our start was a propitious one, so far at le ist as weather was concerned, for .it was one of those • bright cloudless days that abound so plcnteously in this Bay Province, and goes far, aa we all know, to make us at peace with ourselves and all the world beside. We were passing through Meanee and Clive before very long, tivo thriving prosperous villages, bright, and green, and home-like. And beyond Ulive a little, we passed a" carriage and;pair of spanking greys, full of Maori women and children, the belongings of a prominent Hawke's Bay chief. The women were his wives, the children the fiuit of his loins. Some few months ago he was a godly man. this Maori chief, walking circumspectly inthewaysofmorality, and given to the outward observance of religion, but of late he has gone back a«ain to the ways of his fathers. He has laid aside li'w godliness, and his morality has become inconvenient. Never mind, by-a,nd-bye this Rangatira, this "Nature's gentleman," will cive up his makutu and grow tired of bis flesh-pots of Egypt, and on c more become a zealom Christian. But at present, oh ! you wicked, wicke I old sinner. "Religion amongst the Natives?1' exclaimed my friend, re-echoing my words, " lle'igion amongst the Natives, 1 regret to sty, is iio'hiug more nor less than an empty form. They put it on and off on the whim of the moment, just as they would a suit of ■ clothe?." His words, 1 fear, are but too true. But be this as it may, the lusts of the flesh have taken strong hold of this maa, at all events just now—if, that is to say, the possession of many wives may be so spoken of. But after all, is he any worse than many a wiser man from Solomon's time downwards to this present year of grace? "We do openly what the rest of the world do privately," I once heard Brigham Young say before some visitors, when speaking of the M'Cullom Bill, then before Congress. Perhaps this Hawke's Bay chief would say the same thing, if spoken to on the matter. But as I have something more to say on this score hereafter, I will now resume my journey. Around us on all sides lie graesy plain and r.'llins upland—rich, sweet succulent pasture 1-tnd all- land you could not buy for twenty

pounds an acre, or more. The paddocks are dotted with sheep, looking rouud and fat and_ woolly, whilst choice mobs of sleek cattle look out upon us in dreamy contemplation a? we drive pist them. But there is nothing visible in the country around to bespeak cultivation ; neither stack nor hayrick, nor farmyard nor green crop, meet the eye far and wide. Then we come to Havelock, a small rural hamlet, scattered and grass gr >wn. Here we put up for dinner at one of the accommodation houses of the [jlace. Whilst lounging about waiting for the meal, my companion is accosted by a bystander, and informed in tones of easy condescension that the loan or gifb of half-a-crown would not be refused. But my companion ia cqml to the occasion. He informs the applicant that he could do any amount of business on these terms, but must decline, as he is a thorough bsliever in tlie self-reliant policy. And speaking of accommodation houses reminds me of something I have got to say about them. Throughout Hawke's Bay, as elsewhere throughout the North, the accommodation houses I came across were by no means pleasant kinds of places to stay in. As a rule you get but little civility to welcome you in coming, you have but little notice taken of you during yonr st.y, but lit le attention paid you when departing. Comforts there are none. The meals are bad ; .the drinks worse ; the sleeping apartments worst. In one way or another I have knocked about the Middle Island a good deal; and in these knockmg3 about of mine I have stayed at all kinds of out of the way places from one end of it to the other. Indeed, I fancy, I know pretty well every hotel and accommodation house from Itiverton in the south to Picton in the north, and I can safely affirm with all truth that as a class they are immeasurably superior to those of the North Island. This journey I itself furnishes a case in point. Drawing, up one day at the door of a Hawke's Bay accommodation house, where we intended hatting | for a while, we hailed the landlord loudly, I but for some time no notice was taken of us. | The man made his appearance, however, at last. Shuffling out of the door, he j pointed to the stable with his outstretched I finger, telling us at the same time, with [ much affability we mig' t put up pur horses j there if we liked. I shall never forget, that landlord—never, as long as I live. I shall never forget the easy gracefulness of h:s attitude as he leant against the wall, his hands stuck well down into his breechespackets, and a bland smile of satisfaction lighting up his honest, wholesome countenance, as he watched us unyoking our horses with our own hands. I shall never forget the kindly words and en :ouraging nods with which he lightened our labours, as he stood superintending us in our work. A warm feeling of welfare for the man comes welling up strong within me now as I think of him and follow him again in memory, as I then followed him bodily, leading the horses to the sUVe, whilst he preceded me with dignified decorous step. The stable wa3 dirty, dilapidated, and unwholesome, and the manger disgustingly filthy— an acting henroost in fact. I'm not amiable when I think of that manger even now ; and if at the time a good round oath or two escaped me, I hold myself guiltless of using bad language. How would you like to clem it out yourself, as we had to do, or go elsewhere. After a time, the small.boy of the establishment—a pocket edition of the gnidman—brought ussomeoats. handed ustheineasures,threw himself against a post, and shot knowing impudent winks at us fnm out the corner of his eye, whilst he whistled a gay and lively time to his entire satisfaction. I perspired with anger, hatred, and malice; I know I did. In my. then state of mind, I solemnly declare I could have ■ murdered that young ruffian on the spot, and red-handed have sat down to | dinner with a good appetite and a clear conscience. Dinner ! ah, me! Fancy the dinner we sat down to. But, faugh ! Why should I ask you to fancy anything so nasty. We were honoured by the landlord's presence during the meal, which ought, perhaps,- to have gone some way to the making of it endurable ; but it did not. He sat in the room the whole time with us, evidently enjoying hims°lf to his heart's content, as he lolled back in his arm chair and tainted the unwholesome atmosphere with the aroma, of his choice cigar. Suggest to him to leave— tell him to be off. Bless your innscent heart, we did suggest, and we did tell, but all to no purpose. He was like Gallio of old, he cared for none of these things. Good heavens, how I swot as I watched him. I wished him no harm; but I could have made his coffin on the spot. From Havelock onwards, for six miles or so. we pass through rich bottom land, glori- | ous to look on, rolling away to the right, a green sea of luxuriant pasturage ; too luxuriant" perhaps, for sheep, but a very pink of perfection for cattle. Then we leave behind us the plain, and enter the hill country beyond. Not a country of rough fugged hills this, though, mind you, but a country of soft, smooth, limestone ranges, for the most part thickly covered with grass and great areas of fern. We are now in the pastoral country proper of the Province, with great mobs of sheep browsing around us. Along country such as this we travel n^any a mile, over a white powdered glinting road that winds in and out of shallow gullies, and is scarcely relieved from m/>n''t>ny by the Maori huts, the Native C >llege, and the clumps of bush that dot it here and tture at wide intervals. At last we reach Waipawa, a village of larger growth than any in Hawke's Bay; and here we stay for the night. The following day we push through to Waipukimn, a thriving village community of a dozen houses or so ; from thence we diverge to the left, and enjoy t-e warm hospitality of the settlers along the route— make oar way back again to town at our leisure. But of this return trip I shall say nothing, or next to nothing, lest I should inadvertently be speaking of matters I have no busin ss to speik of. On our wav back we passed dose by the residence of one of the great landed ma^mates of the Province, whosn possessions ext nded around us on all sides. But he is not to be enviel his possessions if all I hear of him be true —all, nay, if but the tithe of them be true. It is asserted of him by these Hawke's B'tv people, that he has been the stirr.?r up of biter strife Betwixt them and the Native grantees ; that he has sp 'ken of them (the set-lers) as a body of unprlneipl- d men. who have wrestel from the Natives their lands and possessions by fraud and unrighteousness ; that, moreover, he has toll thes '. Native grantees the wresting of land by means such as the^e gave no legal or moral. claim, to the ownership of property, no heretli'-a'y title to the fee simple of the soij ; that the claims would be disallowed in the -Assembly, and the titles upseb in the Courts. Th::y say. that incalculable mischief has resulted from these teaching*, and, with some reason, are fierce and wrathful. They declare that the land agitation now disturbing the Native mind all along the East Coast is entirely owing to this man's meddlesome interference. They-roft-r you to the doiugs of Henry Matou and his gang of bravos at Poverty Bay as a case in point: but of this more anon. They say very hard things indeed of this gentleman, and hate him with a litter hatred —whether deservedly or not, of course, I cannot say. itawke's bay as a pastoual country. For twenty miles or more around Napier, and away up along the coast to the borders of Wellington, the country rejoices in all these outward characteristic > that make t»lad the heart of man given to pastoral pursuits. There is a'Kiudance of grass, and plenty of w.«ter. The e'iniate is mild, the port close handy, and the mean 3of communication are excellent. In fact, outwardly, to the eye, it is a very Elysium itself for the grazing of sheep and of cattle. But then, as we know, outward appearances are not to be depend <L on always. "Us distance lends enchantment to the view, Ami robes the mountain with its azure hue. And the enchantment of Hawke's Bay as a pastoral country, will, I fancy, be found to sober down- a little, when yon come to examine it more closely. For the twenty miles I have been speaking of, the formation of the Province is principally limestone, a formation, as we all know, highly prized among>t the settlers of O.ago and Canterbury. In Otago and Canterbury, a limestone ridge is to the owner as the very apple of his eye, diffusing, as it does, warmth and invigoration in winter. But up here, in Hawke's Bay, soil of this kind has its drawbacks. The heat of summer is very great; and when the hot burning rays of the mid-day sun come pouring down on this limestone country in all their force and fury, tbe ground becomes a very oven, and, as a matter of course, the gras3 loses all its moisture, Us succulence, and its greenness. Leaving the liotestare V>el*--, and more especially away up north.wards, towards Lake Taupo, we come wpon great grey garish tracts of pumice land.—'tracts of land (juite eseless

for pastoral purposes, or for any other pur- a pose either; indeed, as far as that goes— fc where sheep, as in some of our Southland a country, mysteriously decay and die. A v large portion of the Province is already in il English gr.iss, but there is a quantity of c fern land as yet untouched and waiting to ii be laid down. It costs ou an overage some- s thing like thirty shillings an acre to lay s down fern land in English gras3 ; and ttie t doing so is materially assisted by, thistle*. I Fringing the margin of the shore, on a c bright sunny slope, on Mr Nairn's run—one a of the best, if not the best, of the coast runs a of Hawke's B.iy—some few years ago, so the I; story runs, a shepherd betaking himself to his t1 boundary, came across a luxuriant crop of it thistles, that, like Jonah's gourd, seemed to h have sprung up fnll grown in a night, and q forthwith hastened back to his employer to -^ fell him the wondrous tale. Great was the a consternation of Mr Nairn; dire the fore- n bodings of his friends and neighbours. A a > great scourge had sprung up in their midst, jj and it would spread before very long ov't-r the face of the country. Thistles had been a , found ou Nairn's run—yos, actual thistles. w Mischievous! why, it was simply ruinous. «, So men told one anotht r with bated breath. But how c«,uld it have happened ? How could thistles have obtained a footing up there on.that lonely country-side, so far c t away from track, or house, or whare, or dwelling of any kind ? It seemed inexplicable—a perfect mystery, in f-ict; but before very long the mystery was cleared up. A c shepherd hid been dismissed from the station p some time before, and the man had wreaked his vengeauce by scattering thistle saeds. p May perdition seize him, the villain ! May but we can understand the v dire anathemas that would be hurled * at his head. The denunciations calltddowo, t by the help of candle and book, on the head , of the unfortunate jackdaw of Rheims were 0 mildness itself compared with the deep impnextions hurled after the heels of this miscreant s epherd. But after a time the excitement died out. The thistles, indeed, -p spread and multiplied; but there was n> help j for it, spread they must. But after a time M men began to observe astrangephenomenon in r connection with these thistles. They began to observe that after two or three years all the • older thistles died out, and then it dawned on their minds that this great thistle nuisanoe E was, in truth, no nuisance at all, but a blessing in disguise. The thing is no wan "admitted fact. The thistlea are found to _ loosen the ground and pulverise the soil; i they are, in fact, looked upon as most efficient agents in preparing the ground for the reception of English, grass seed*.* Indeed, thistle seed is now scattered ov< r the burnt ground when the grass setd in sown, aud the £ thistLs are. of material assistance ;n keeping down the young ferns. ' , ■ Long-woolled sheep are the sheep princi- t pally in vogue in Hawke's Ray just now. The merinoe3, indeed, are so few tint, practically and to all intents and purposes, the Province may. be spoken of, from a grazing point of view, as a Province of half-lirtds— i principally nf half-bred Llncolns and • fotswolds. Whether the progeny of the Lincoln or the Cots wold answer best is a | moot point amongst the settlers. They ? sometimes grow very warm over the disiussion, I understand ; but I have heard the matter argued more than once, and always with moderation, with much ability and a * good denl of technical knowledge. The great C.ttsvold champion is one of the most enthusiastic of men, who has much to say for his side of the question, and says it well too. Just at present, however, the Lincoln side of the q lestion is the more popular one. That lono;-woolled sheep 1, be they the jj progeny of the Ootswold, the Lincoln, the £ Leicester, the. Romney Marsh, or what they j may, are in ordinary seasons the most profit- n able sheep for Hawke's Bay, few who have v seen the country and know anything of the matter will, I think, doubt. But I very *, much, doubt the wisdom, of the settlers in - going in so largely—so entirely, I may say— for hnlf-breds as they do. It is all right j enough, no doubt, in ordinary seasons—in 1 seasons, that is to say, when there is a fair 1 average fall of rain, and the heat of summer is not greater than that of the generality of t years. But how about sea ons that are not j ordinary—seasons devoid of moisture, and so intensely hot that every blade of grass and \ green thing droops and dies ? Seasons such as these, ..mark you, come to Hawke's Bay oftener than you think—oftener, at all events, c than is good for it. I may be told it would f fare badly with sheep of every description at a time like this—with merino as well as f half-bred. No doubt of it. But the light, ( hardy, active merino would live wh?n the large, grosser feeding half- bred would starve Yes, I think it's a mistake going in thus wholesale for the production of h.ilf-breds ; ■] and, if all I hear be true, the settlers have j made a mistake also in their manner of b-ced-ing. Old sheep farmers will tell you, if you care to question them closely on the matters, at least they have so told me, that this matter of breeding has not been carried out judiciously, or with due care. The> have spoken to me of tlie ewes selected as having be^n for the most part oil, and of inferior quality, and I must say the sheep I saw fell short of the average ran of hall-breds you come across in Otago and in Canterbuiy. But if the sheep are below the average of those of the Southern Provinces, certainly the same cannot be said of ! the Hawke's Bay cattle. Finer herds jof cattle I do not remember ever i having seen in my life ; there are certainly none finer to fee met with in the Colony. They are the pride and the glory of Hawke's Bay, these cattle. But then no expense or trouble has been spared in the brteiiug and general management, and the country is everything that could be desired; so we need not wonder at the high standard of excellence attained. I have seen one herd of cattle,.some seven hundred or more in number, petfec*-- pictures in their way, the property of Mr Coleman—or rather of Mr Cole^ man's successors, Messrs Watt and Farmer — for some of which, I am informed on very good authority, £25 apiece has been offered and refused. But perhaps, on the whole, the Province is more ot a cattle country than a sheep country. The rich x^bs and green hill sides, with their thick carpets of luxuriant pasturage, are just the very kind of places y.>u would expect to see herds of cattle looking fat, and sleek, and glossy, chewing the cud of calm contentment, and after their own fashion— Dreaming the haj>py hours away. But pasturage so richly luxuriant as this is not, I think, conducive to the health or happiness of sheep. The sheep up here certainly do not look healthy. There is a gond deal of scouring observable amongst them in the spring, and more esie.rilly amnnast young lambs, which yoa find standing apart by themselves, weakly looking, and with none of that gambolling playfulness one is accustomed naturally to find amongst young healthy I*mb3. The great drawback to sheep farming, however, in this Province is. undoubtedly, foot-rot. Now, foo'rpt, as most people know, is not a pleasant visitor amongst sheep, even when it c^mesin the very mildestof forms, but when, a< up here, it assumes the form of a chronic disease it may then with all truth. be spoken of as a terrible scourge. We know scab is terrible —is. in fact, a term of very loathing to sheep farmers—and yet I have been toll by more than one of these Hawke's Bay settlers, men experienced in this kind of thing, that of the two they would prefer dealing with scab. If this is so, it must be bad enough, in all conscience, and a sore trial to the piac^, seeing that it is spread over the length and breadth of the land. There are no doubt a few favoured spots in the Province exempt from, this disease, though I never heard of any other ran besides Mr Hill's that could be said to enjoy entire exemption. At all events, I am quite safe in saying you could count on the fingers of one hand alt the runs that enjoy exemption thoroughly. The thing is gone so far now, indeed, that very few people hope for its entire ei-a^ication, though of course they use every means in their power to lessen its evil effects. Ail the older sheep are culled out, and the flocks are driven fhroxigh the arsenic tanks four times a year, and this is about all that can be done. The want of a mirket for the surplus fat stock of the Province is another drawback to sheep farming in Hawke's Bay. The meat-consuming power of the Province itself, with its nine or ten thousand inhabitants, is of course inconsiderable. Not a tithe of the fat stock fattened within its own borders can be consumed by the people of the place, and, accordingly, an outlet of some kind or another for the surplus is a matter of some considerable importance to the well-being of the community at large. Boiling clown has been tried; but the trial has been abandoned, and so I presume I am justified in etatiact it cannot have turned out altogether satisfactory as an undertaking. Auckland has of late bocome a Jarge consumer of. this surplus meat,

as ifc lias of our surplus wheat and flour, but s the Auckland market is only roached by sea, f and we all'know what a sea voyage means t when fat stock are concerned. No doubt of n it, Hawke's Bay has its drawbacks as a sheep n country, but these drawbacks notwithstand- b ing, it is on the whole, and all things considered, a Province of great pastoral re- r sources. The Census returns indeed show this—show it beyond the shadow of a doubb. In what other Province will you find a couple of millions of acres of land carrying a million of sheep and upwards. lam quite aware of the fact that the actual acreage of * Hawke's Bay is nearer three millioqs than t l two ; but it must be borne in mind that no w inconsiderable number of these acres arc still j,in the haads of the Natives. And lam vi quite certain, in the course of a few years, tl when the fern land is laid down in English v grass, the sheep of the Province will number n: nearer two millions than one: a sheep to the v; acre. Comment is needless. J1 hawke's bay as an agricultural country-, dHow are your farmers getting on?" I ti asked, one day, of a Hawke's Bay resident d; who had formerly been a settler in Otago. «i " Farmers ?" he answered; " why, the fact 0; of the matter is, we have no farmers here in f your sense of the word. We have plenty of V small settlers but then they nearly all gc in f for grazing. Indeed you can travel pretty I well over the whole of the country and i, scarcely come across a stack of vrheit or a j oats." And I am bound to say, in the ti course of such travelling as I made in the t! Province, I found his words fully verified. le Now, when we find a Province like Hawke's Bay, with its great stretches of fer- ® tile bottom land and its mild genial climate, a^ possessing outwardly to the eye, in fact. i evvry possible requisite to make the occupa- ,* ti<-n of agiiiulture pleasant and profitable, to y a'l intents and purposes unoccupied by crop a or cultivation of any extent, naturally, and it as a matter of course, we come to ask our- s\ selves why this should be so ? How comes *< it, with everything in ifa favour as a farming c Province, should it be a Province altogether cl devoid of farmers in. our sense of the c; word ? When you come to question a °] Hawke's Bay man about the matter he a] will answer you, " They go in for grazing in preference to farming, because grazing tl pays better." And, doubtless, he himself h believes fully in the satisfactoriness of his h answer as explaining the matter; but no y* such reason can, I think, be accepted as at *s all satisfactory by outsiders. The raising of w beef and mutton up here may be a very C 1 pleasant and profitable occupation, but it c mnot be so very profitable after all. when & you come to think of it. It is raised for an s j outside market—for Auckland—where, as a ti frit-nd laughingly told me, they raise nothing n of their own, but commission agents and li the promoters of new companies. To reach h thi3 market is expensive and risky, and cl when reached it is uncertain. Now, on the d other hand, there is always a safe market c< close by, at men's very doors, for all the wheat and the oats they may grow, and w both of these cereals rule very high, must, c indeed, of necessity do so, Beeing that every t year the supply needful for the wants of the V Province is drawn largely from the South, b from Otago and Canterbury. How, then, v can any outsider accept as satisfactory the P explanation that the raising of meat is more profitable than the raising of cereals ? The truthjof the matterjis, that notwith- y standing its apparent advantages as an agri- y cultural country, Hawke's Bay, like most I other Northern Provinces, is not, in truth, a adapted to agriculture. The soil is, if any- b thing, too rich, and the climate too mild and h geniaL They want some of our frosts to s< pulverise the ground and destroy the insect al life. " I remember once going in for wheat. I! I had 250 or 300 acres under crop, and a , finer young crop of wheat you would not y wish to see. I passed it by one evening and j ( pulled up to look at it, for it was a sight ft worth looking at as it'lay'spread out before me in all its freshness and greenness and health! ■ness. The next morning it was all gone. Not one single blade of it was left The locusts had come swooping down upon it in the night, and had eaten it all up as bare as the. palm of your hand." So spoke a Hawke's Bay gentleman, many years resident in the Province, to me, as we sat discussing the insert life of the place. " Yes," he continued, " the locusts and grasshoppers are very bad up here. Why, I have sometimes seen them darken the country side, and have watched from my own door a cloud of them hovering over my place half a mile long or more. And many a time I have put a mob of sheep in the paddock, and hunted them about with dogs to trample the insects to death." ' No ; Hawke's Bay is not a place I would choose to make a living in from farming— nor, indeed, f..r that matter, is the North Island on the whole a country I would select for such a purpose^ And it seems to me inexplicable, knowing what I do of the conntry, how our leading Colonial statesmen should make the mistakes they sometimes do when forecasting the horoscope of the future of the North. When, for instance, Mr Stafford states, as he is very fond of stating whenever the opp >rtunity for do rng so arise 3. that the North Island will eventually carry a larger population than the Middle Bland, I, for one, take leave t> say, I question very much the accuracy of Ma "statement And when the members of the Government tell U3 —as one of them told us last Session—that the half a million of money we gave the Northern Provinces for the purchasing of Native lands would return to us of the South fourfold in the increased population it would give them. I fancy it ia the old story of Rasselas over again. We are simply listening with credulity to the fond fancies of hope painting the future with promises that will never be realised. And now, in bringing these remarks to a close. I will just say a word or two about HAWKERS EAY AS A FIELt> FOR INVESTMENT. To my mind Hawke's Bay is one of the pleasantest of all the settlements in the polony. . Indeed, to a man of simple habits and rural tastes—to a man given to the v ing of, what Kingsley calls, the gentle life, the place is a very paradise itself. The XJeople are a homely, a hospitable, and a well-to-do people, living their own ■ inner life of peace and contentment, and ex- -. tending to the stranger a frank hospitality : that makes his sojourn amongst them very pleasant. In kindness, in courtesy, in eul- . ture, in refinement, in all those characteristics in fine that distinguish the true gentleman and gentlewoman, they stand unrivalled amongst New Zealand communities. i That they are a happy people, 1 thick I ' have had occasion to imply more than once- [. already, implying at the same time that they - are blessed beyond most people as far as the '• goad-things of the world go. Bat there is ' such a thing as prizing too highly these good things, and the Hawke's Bay people seem to me not altogether exempt from this little ■ failing. A prudent man coming amongst . them desirous to invest his money and re- ; eeive a fair return for his investment, must i scatter his pradence to the wind if he ■ purchases at present prices. The land ; along the plain may be first-class land—nay, t indeed, is land of the very first quality—but £20 or £30 an acre is too much for any land ;of the kind. The sheep runs a*e no doubt • very good properties in their way, but sheep '■ farming can never pay, even at the best of ► times, when you give £2 a head or more for ■ your sheep. i The truth of the matter is, a year or two ! ago, some four or rive of our Otago men came t up to these parts, bringing with them their • shrewdness, their energy, and their capital, ', and they drove good bargains with the i Hawke's Bay settlers ; and by their energy t and experience, and the upward tendency of i property of every description, they cleared ' some thousands by their speculations, and J then1 the Hawke's Bay people naturally 1 enough—naturally perhaps, but not wisely— I wagged their heads, and doubled the prices 3 of their properties. They saw three Ot-•-go I gentlemen, for instance, come amongst them r and buy two properties for thirty thonsaad . pounds; and in the course o£ a very few i months they saw these self-sams g< ntlemen 1 clearing out with some fifteen or sixteen s thousand pounds to the good; and forthwith r they began asking themselves why should i they allow Otago men to take away from them the cream of the country in this way ? t They had had all the hard work, and now, £ at the eleventh hour, in stepped these c Southern men, and snatched frf m them the !, fruits of their working. Let them do it s again, that's all—my word! c The very self same thing has happened n amongst ourselves. Those amongst us who l» are old identities can remember the panic ir that seized the Otago settlers when first sr the Victorians came trooping over here, c and dropped into some of the good things 2- that were to be picked up just at first. Why, tt the settlers were frightened en!; of their very >o wits, and, for a time, were afraid to open *t their months at all lest they should not open is them wide enough, and it ended by their o- opening them too wide altogether. .Bvit i things settled down, sfe last, as "they will

settle down before very loa? ia Hawke's I'ay. Meantime, however, I liavc no hestfestion in saying a man wishing to invest-bfe-mouey profital ly can do so, just now, to! much better advantaee in Otago or Canterbury than he can in Hawke's Bay.